Is GINA a good thing?

The DNA blogosphere has been sporadically abuzz with chatter about the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA), which appears to be almost universally regarded as a good thing. In fact, a Nature editorial last week proclaimed that "the entire scientific and medical community is adamantly supportive of this bill" and implied that a failure to pass the GINA would have had disastrous consequences for the field of genetics as a whole:

Otherwise, the enormous research and clinical progress being made in the nascent era of personalized medicine will come crashing to a halt because people — despite the efforts of George Church — will remain rightly wary of taking genetic tests.

A letter to Nature this week from Spanish scientist and Biopolitical blogger Marcelino Fuentes shows that support for the bill is not universal:

I, for one, do not support this bill.

Better information allows better matching of people and jobs, and of people and insurance policies. The purpose of firms is to produce goods and services efficiently, and information helps to improve efficiency. The purpose of insurance is to manage risk, and information availability lowers risk.

You fear that the use of genetic information by employers and insurers will lead to social inequality — or, in other words, you trust that ignorance will preserve equity and fairness. There are better ways to deal with social inequality than to force ignorance upon workers, employers and insurers. And a better informed, more efficient, wealthier society creates better conditions for everyone to live decent and productive lives, whatever our genetic make-up.

I'm not necessarily supporting this view - although I'm certainly not as unambiguously positive about GINA as others appear to be - but rather throwing it out there for discussion.

Discussion:
The OpenHelix blog makes some excellent points.

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